Nasher

Optimism = we will make the 8 Pessimism = we won’t make the 8 Realism = we have a chance of making the 8. The pessimists believing they are the realists is the misconception of the ages.

Disco Turner thoughts? Jury is still out - I wish he was playing with experienced forwards ala 2021 vintage TMac and Benny Brown. I love his contest and the fact that he rarely wastes it - not impacting the game yet but it may come. I’m hopeful but not yet confident.

Adds a touch of cleanliness by foot that we’ve lacked, especially with Trac out. Future leader too IMO - important with the pretty lengthy list of players from WA we seem to be assembling. Loving his progress - hard to believe he’s still just a tacker himself.

We have the list profile of a team in the middle of a rebuild at the moment. If our best players this year had fired we’d have been in the flag window and it would have been against the odds. Nevertheless, there will be no post-flag bottom out like we’ve seen Richmond, WCE and Hawthorn have. We’ll be continually up there like Sydney and Geelong have been.

Would’ve been nice to claw back a bit more percentage but no complaints - we smashed them. It was a game dominated by youth - Rivers and van Rooyen in particular as best players. Despite the disappointing season this list has a lot of upside, and this season isn’t over yet.

I hate gatekeeping supporters. As a remote supporter, nothing annoys me more than supporters who claim superiority because they’re in the privileged position to go games when others can’t. But if the only reason for a supporter’s non-attendance is “to send a message”, that support sucks. A lot.

Loved the Kynan Brown tackle. Well done son. I loved it when the camera panned to dad - Ooze and Daniel Ward either side of him were going off their heads but poor old Doggy was crapping his dacks. I could relate.

Did you watch that last quarter? That definitely wasn’t the worst possible result.

Lol I’m a blue sky junkie, but this season is clearly boned. I’ve well and truly recalibrated my expectations.

Watched that with my Carlton supporting girlfriend. Enjoyed that all round - happy about the good mood in the house and happy that my suspicion that Essendon are pretenders is confirmed. Everyone wins.

Ready to hate them again as needed, but right now I don’t. Loved that for them. That felt satisfying to me like a Dees win.

Oh man, this is very rough viewing.

Some people enjoy being miserable. How you deal with disappointment is a choice - I don’t know why some people choose self-flagellation over and over.

Toe injury apparently

This has been a true 16th vs 18th, but seeing Aaron Keating reincarnated chasing down Liam Ryan made me smile. Good boy, love that effort.

Why can’t good medium-small defenders just stay that way? There is always, always need for competitive, skilled defenders in the back 50. I don’t understand the fixation with wanting to turn them in to midfielders all the time.

Every year since about 2020 was meant to be the year Geelong finally went off the cliff. I thought we might have punted them off it in 2021 but nope. The buggers seem to just be able to get up again, over and over. From now on I’m just going to assume they’ll be a contender again until I see with my own eyes that they’re not.

This mirrors every other game against poo teams like Richmond and Hawthorn. One half of both sides making our eyes bleed, before we cruise away in the second half and win by plenty. Even the West Coast game wasn’t that different except we forgot the skipping away bit. Love the Langdon to half forward move. He killed it. Huge vote of confidence in Windsor to play the opposite wing to Hunter. I will legit cry the day Max pulls the pin.

Why would Dusty leave Richmond for Norf or Hawf? I think if he was going to play for a non-contender he’d just stay where he’s comfortable.

Great to see Harmesy having a real dip in the last few weeks. Still got a lot of love for the lad.

Do you think the second quarter (score wise basically even) was a marked improvement in “effort”? I don’t. The game looked basically the same to me, we just found ways to score.

Sounds stupid given a 0.0 to 5.0 first quarter but I really didn’t feel like the score reflected the effort. It was our usual arm wrestle first quarter but the score somehow didn’t reflect. This game was a freak anomaly for mine. I write it off as a disappointing loss that we should have won and move on.

Imagine if we scored literally anything in the first quarter? Oh well. Trac, you are are bloody star.

My perspective after last week and this is: what we do against lowly teams don’t matter. Against Richmond, or Hawthorn, or whoever else, as long as we get the 4 points, nothing else matters. These are the games that matter. Beating the other top teams matter. We’re a contender in 2024 and we ARE good enough to win it. Love these Dees.

They’re right about the Sparrow/Viney thing though.